Misc Neutralizing phenibut acid

[mike.vick]

Yeah no I'm gonna break open my caps of scripted pregabalin and mix with some lye, just to be sure ;p

Pregabalin is a pharmacuetical medicine that is quality controlled and (i'm sure) PH-balanced.

 

[mike.vick]

Same here, taking 16 caps of 250mg in one go doesn't hurt my stomach at all...

Taking one will make me feel like I have swallowed razorblades for about 3 days. I have other stomach ailments as well, such as cannabinoid-induced-hyperemisis - that will near-cripple me some days. I'm gonna stop smoking pot cause of it- and that has been the love of my life for 8-9 years.

 

[mike.vick]

THAT BEING SAID- I mentioned that I mixed the pills with baking soda in a 10:4 ratio, as chemistry dictates, to completely neutrilize the mixture. This causes bubbles(CO2) when added to water because it becomes a free acid and gives off CO2 and Salt as a result. - But only bubbles for about 12 seconds and didnt give me gas when taken in pill to react in stomach.

 

[belligerent drunk]

So you know most solutions in the body are buffers, right? You add in a little acid, you neutralize a little something... everything stays the same.

Like everyone has said, neutralizing the phenibut before taking it doesn't solve anything - it's the same as taking phenhcl after soda, or taking phenhcl before soda, or taking them together, or not taking the soda at all. I would start looking elsewhere.

 

[Slow_Mobius]

There seems to be a consensus answer to your question--phenibut HCl is not causing your extensive gi problems via its acidity.

There isn't much point in asking questions if youre only going to explain why you think everyone's answers are wrong and why you already knew better.

 

[mike.vick]

^^^ well you arent obliged to do anything put piss shit eat drink and sleep

 

[Slow_Mobius]

Stay classy

 

[mike.vick]

Raw phenibut fucks up your insides like a million razors were swallowed. And if you don't think so- you've never tried gabapentin. And your probably 14 years old.

 

[R4FKEN]

I never tried gabapentin, true, but I'm not 14 either. More like... 31. As I said, 4g of Phenibut capsules does nothing to my stomach or GI tract. You can keep repeating it, but that doesn't make it true.

 

[Solipsis]

Maybe phenibut and gabapentin highly irritate YOUR g.i. tract, mike.. but saying that it's particularly harmful is jumping to the wrong conclusion. Apparently you have a very sensitive g.i. tract is more like it. Whether its as bad as ulceration or anything, you could maybe start by checking whether some foods also give you such pains. Hopefully you already take your phenibut dissolved and dilute?

I have experience with phenibut, pregabalin (daily) and gabapentin and none of these really affect my g.i. tract badly and no other organic acids I've had that I can think of either. And I don't get a prescription for something like omeprazol (which I have no idea if it would help you) with my pregabalin.

Stop the ad hominem attacks too by the way. People here contribute to helpful scientific analysis of your 'issue'. Such attacks are not a replacement for a valid argument, it just devalues the whole thing.

 

[Soulfake]

Would it be possible to convert for example 1g Phenibut HCL with 400mg Sodium Bicarbonate (Is that the correct ratio?) into the free amino acid and then adding citric acid (does anyone know about how much would be needed?) into the solution to yield Phenibut citrate? (Phenibut citrate is market as "Citrocard" in Russia, there is a paper saying that the citrate is more potent than the hcl, so you could use smaller amounts.

I really should have payed more attention in chemistry, it's somehow hard to understand those reactions especially as Phenibut is a dipolar ionic amino acid and I have no clue what this means for reactions with acids/bases. I read some articles but couldn't find any answer how you would do something like this correctly without having unnecessary byproducts of the baking soda (too much sodium chloride for example or unreacted Phenibut HCL). I would be also interested in a possible reaction of phenibut with arginine which is a relatively strong base afaik and what the reaction product of both would be? Would Arginine and Phenibut somehow "connect" to each other / give Phenibut-"arginate"?

This is the article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26033589

"Anti-aggressive effects of phenibut (25 mg/kg) and its structural analogue citrocard (50 mg/kg) were revealed in rats under condition of provoked intraspecific aggression. These substances significantly decreased manifestations of aggression in animals: they increased the latency of attacks and reduced their number. Anti-aggressive effects of citrocard were more pronounced than effects of phenibut under conditions of non-competitive aggression induced by fear of inescapable painful exposure or under conditions of competitive aggression reflecting the ability of animals to reveal adaptive social communicative skills in aversive situation."

Another thing I don´t really understand is the difference between elimination and systemic clearance of a compound and what it means for effects/accumulation etc.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24143367

"The main pharmacokinetic parameters attest to short elimination half-life and mean retention time of a single citrocard molecule. The average rate of plasma concentration decrease of the compound determined small area under the pharmacokinetic curve. Steady-state distribution volume was low and only slightly surpassed the volume of extracellular body fluids in rat, which indicated moderate capacity of citrocard to distribution and accumulation in the tissues, which is seen from low systemic clearance (Cl) despite the quick elimination of the compound. Absolute bioavailability was 64%. "

I read some articles about elimination and systemic clearance but I don't get the real difference other than one is being used for the general removal of a drug in the body and the other is somehow used in connection with time units to remove it. Reading this only in english makes it also a bit harder as I couldn't find the german translation for "systemic clearance".

 

[Soulfake]

Sry for double posting but I wanted to ask if anyone knows something about the reactions between Phenibut HCL, citric acid and sodium bicarbonate I described above.

I'm really wondering what I am drinking if I mix Phenibut HCL with ctric acid and neutralize it with bicarbonate. The Bicarbonate would break the HCL off the Phenibut which results in Phenibut base/free amino acid (or the sodium salt of Phenibut?) and sodium chloride, but what happens in a solution of Phenibut HCL and citric acid?

Bicarbonate forms sodium citrate with citric acid but when it binds with the HCL of the Phenibut the Phenibut would bind with the free citric acid that hasn't already reacted with bicarbonate, right? So it's probably a mix of Phenibut citrate, sodium ctrate and sodium chloride I guess.

 

[Hodor]

Sry for double posting but I wanted to ask if anyone knows something about the reactions between Phenibut HCL, citric acid and sodium bicarbonate I described above.

I'm really wondering what I am drinking if I mix Phenibut HCL with ctric acid and neutralize it with bicarbonate. The Bicarbonate would break the HCL off the Phenibut which results in Phenibut base/free amino acid (or the sodium salt of Phenibut?) and sodium chloride, but what happens in a solution of Phenibut HCL and citric acid?

Bicarbonate forms sodium citrate with citric acid but when it binds with the HCL of the Phenibut the Phenibut would bind with the free citric acid that hasn't already reacted with bicarbonate, right? So it's probably a mix of Phenibut citrate, sodium ctrate and sodium chloride I guess.

If you dissolve phenibut HCl in water, then neutralize with sodium bicarbonate, you'll get a solution of phenibut free amino acid (or rather phenibut zwitterions), sodium cations and chloride anions.

If you add citric acid to a solution of phenibut HCl, then neutralize with sodium bicarbonate, you'll also get a solution of phenibut free amino acid, sodium cations and chloride anions, as well as citrate anions, but no phenibut citrate. Basically, nothing changes, except for the fact that you're going to need wayyyy more bicarbonate because each molecule of citric acid requires 3 molecules of bicarbonate to de-protonate.

 

[Soulfake]

@Hodor thanks for the info! So the only thing you can do with Phenibut HCL without more than household items is basically neutralizing it with sodium bicarbonate. How would one make e.g. Phenibut citrate from the FAA? I initially thought it would be as easy as caffeine citrate (which is just caffeine mixed with citric acid in solution and dried afaik).

Is it possible to seperate the Phenibut FAA from the sodium chloride that is produced by the reaction of HCL with sodium bicarbonate? Would it be safe to use a different (easy obtainable) base than baking soda for the process so you don't get the sodium chloride in the first place? I guess the small amounts of table salt wouldn't be a big problem even for daily usage (I take about 3g Phenibut daily for 5 years now) but it would be nice if it's easy to seperate it or use something else than baking soda.

I often read that Phenibut is easily soluble in acetone, most sites say that the HCL is soluble but I couldn't find informations about the solubility of the FAA. As I always have acetone at hand for cleaning, extractions etc. that would nice if I could just neutralize the Pheni, dry it and then extract with acetone from the other reaction products like sodium chloride.

It's strange that the FAA has much better effects and less side effects for many people even though the HCL is way more soluble in water. From my experience the FAA gives a smoother relaxation and is more "consistent" than the HCL which sometimes, mostly at the first dose, feels ok but sometimes it just doesn't work well or gives me some negative effects in terms of the body feeling.

Maybe the FAA only converts slowly to the HCL in the stomach acid which gives it different pharmacokinetics? I heard Pheni is only slightly transported through the blood brain barrier, fast transported out of the brain or something like that, maybe the slower absorption of the FAA somehow influences those amino acid transport enzymes or other systems so the Pheni reaches the brain more steadily in small amounts which makes the effect different in comparison to the HCL which is fastly absorbed but also fastly removed or somehow saturates the transporter enzyme etc.

 

[kleinerkiffer]

Another thing I don´t really understand is the difference between elimination and systemic clearance of a compound and what it means for effects/accumulation etc.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24143367
I read some articles about elimination and systemic clearance but I don't get the real difference other than one is being used for the general removal of a drug in the body and the other is somehow used in connection with time units to remove it. Reading this only in english makes it also a bit harder as I couldn't find the german translation for "systemic clearance".

Soweit ich weiss gibt es keine wirkliche deutsche uebersetzung fuer "systemic clearance", in der Pharmakologie nutzen wir selbst den Begriff Clearance
Dieser Artikel sollte dir helfen:
https://accesspharmacy.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?bookid=513&sectionid=41488024

Drug elimination is usually divided into two major components: excretion and biotransformation.

The term clearance describes the process of drug elimination from the body or from a single organ without identifying the individual processes involved. Clearance may be defined as the volume of fluid cleared of drug from the body per unit of time. The units for clearance are milliliters per minute (mL/min) or liters per hour (L/h). The volume concept is simple and convenient, because all drugs are dissolved and distributed in the fluids of the body.

 

[Soulfake]

Soweit ich weiss gibt es keine wirkliche deutsche uebersetzung fuer "systemic clearance", in der Pharmakologie nutzen wir selbst den Begriff Clearance
Dieser Artikel sollte dir helfen:
https://accesspharmacy.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?bookid=513&sectionid=41488024

Hm, das klingt aber eher so als ob beides im Endeffekt das gleiche ist nur das bei der Clearance die einzelnen Prozesse nicht identifiziert werden. Soweit ich es aber bisher immer bei den Beschreibungen ueber Phenibut gelesen hatte klang es eher so das es wegen der schnellen Elimination oder Clearance (bin mir nicht mehr sicher, ist lange her) aber langsamen Clearance oder Elimination lange im Koerper verbleibt auch wenn die Wirkung schon abgeklungen ist oder so?. (Ich finde den Artikel gerade nicht mehr, dachte es steht in der englischen Wikipedia aber da konnte ich es nicht mehr finden.

(Hm, but that sounds more like both are in the end the same thing, just that in the clearance the individual processes are not identified. As far as I've always read in the descriptions of phenibut it sounded more that because of the rapid elimination or clearance (I'm not sure, is a long time ago) but slow clearance or elimination it reamains in the body for a long time even if there are no significant active concentrations in the brain anymore. (I just can not find the article anymore, thought it was in English wikipedia but I could not find it anymore.)

edit: I found the article, it's about citrocard/phenibut citrate but should also be transferable to Phenibut HCL:

"The main pharmacokinetic parameters attest to short elimination half-life and mean retention time of a single citrocard molecule. The average rate of plasma concentration decrease of the compound determined small area under the pharmacokinetic curve. Steady-state distribution volume was low and only slightly surpassed the volume of extracellular body fluids in rat, which indicated moderate capacity of citrocard to distribution and accumulation in the tissues, which is seen from low systemic clearance (Cl) despite the quick elimination of the compound. Absolute bioavailability was 64%."
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ailability_of_Citrocard_a_New_GABA_Derivative

So it's quickly eliminated but has a low systemic clearance which can lead to accumulation. But if clearance is in principle the same as elimination just without the individual processes how can there be a difference?

Does it mean that e.g. it is rapidly transported out of the brain but as it stays and accumulates in the body it can get back into the brain again etc.? The half life of phenibut is said to be about 4-6 hours in most articles but most people report that they can feel effects the next day even if there should be not be enough left to produce this long effect as the half life is so short?

--------------

When I dissolve the phenibut in a too small amount of water and then add the sodium bicarbonate it flocculates out of the solution and is a bubbly foam. If a want to neutralize it without this effect I need much more water (probably because phenibut FAA isn't very water soluble) which means it takes much more time to evaporate. Is it possible that not all the phenibut is converted by using to little water as it produces this foam which maybe isn't completely reacted with some phenibut HCl still being left or is there no difference?

I'm waiting for it do dry and will then try to extract it with acetone to get rid of the sodium chloride. I wonder if it would be possible to convert it further into another salt form like citrate, ascorbate, lysinate or something similar?

 

[kleinerkiffer]

The article seems to be about citrocard (a structural analog of phenibut?), not phenibut itself

 

[Soulfake]

The article seems to be about citrocard (a structural analog of phenibut?), not phenibut itself

edit: I found the article, it's about citrocard/phenibut citrate but should also be transferable to Phenibut HCL

Yes citrocard is phenibut citrate, as far as I know a salt is not the same as a structural analog as e.g. citric acid is only "lightly" bound to the molecule (not "welded" together) without really making it a different compound in comparison to something like an ester.

According to some research papers it has different pharmacokinetics and somewhat different effects (some salts of phenibut seem to be more prone to have antidepressant effects, others are more nootropic etc., I'll post one article below) but essentially phenibut citrate is converted to the hydrochloride in the stomach acid anyways so I guess the different effects arise from different conversion rates/times the citrate is absorbed into the blood and transported into the brain, just as my speculation about the free amino acid being transported more slowly as it takes time to convert into HCL in the body or is maybe absorbed in a different way than usual phenibut hcl.

My guess is that the HCL is absorbed very fast but as phenibut is transported fast out of the brain the different salts or the free amino acid with a slower absorption rate or mechanism could work like a sustained-release formulation and the phenibut reaches the brain constantly in smaller quantities over a longer time period which could make it more effective, maybe because the machanism that transports it out of the brain is not as strongly activated/triggered as with bigger amounts in a shorter time.

The spectra of psychotropic action of some phenibut salts (succunate, maleate, nicotinate) and a composition of phenibut with glutamic acid were studied. It is established, that the substances studied show psychotropic activity spectrum generally similar to that of phenibut, but different in expressiveness of some particular effects. Compound RSPU-149 exhibited the most pronounced psychotropic action: its anxiolytic effect was below, the antidepressant effect was comparable with, and the nootrope action exceeded that of phenibut.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21476277

edit: this is a more detailed article but it's in russian:

https://translate.google.com/transl....php/ekf/article/viewFile/334/298&prev=search

//edit:
I just tried to dissolve the dried phenibut FAA in acetone to get rid of the sodium chloride but somehow it seems to be completely insoluble. I had 10g phenibut reacted with ~4g sodium bicarbonate, dried and powdered it in a mortar. With acetone it gives a miilk-coloured mixture but after letting it soak through a coffee filter there seems to be nothing dissolved in the acetone. I thought phenibut is soluble in acetone as I read this in most articles and user experiments who did the same to purify the converted FAA? (I have pure, water-free pharma acetone). :/

has anyone an idea how I can seperate the phenibut FAA from the sodium chloride? I guess it's not that healthy as there are 200mg of table salt obtained from 1g of phenibut HCl (if I remember correctly) when you neutralize it with sodium bicarbonate and I usually take about 3g every day. (Although I'll try to taper off which isn't that hard, I even felt better after a few days of lowering the dosage to almost the half similar to my experience with reducing kratom intake. I guess it also has much to do with the fact that I use both substances since 2013 daily and my body just feels better when there is less stress for the liver, kidneys etc. from all that stuff (although my blood tests always where in the normal range)

Which base other than baking soda can be easily obtained and safely handled to neutralize the phenibut hcl? I think I read a few times that some people use sodium carbonate instead of bicarbonate as it is a stronger base but wouldn't it also produce sodium chloride from the reaction with hydrochloride.

 

[Cockstrock]

Folks...
I registered here only to teach you something.
Phenibut does cause stomach problems, but it is rather by its mechanism of action than by its actual acidity. Healthy stomach has mechanisms to counteract harmful factors even if it is acidic phenibut or not, exogenous HCl or endogenous one.

There are two important factors:
Phenibut has long duration of action and
phenibut increases secretion of stomach juice. So any amount of soda won't save you, because it has only short duration (like 1 hour). You need healthy stomach, H2 blockers or even better proton pump inhibitors. Also, phenibut (and baclofen too) are contraindicated on stomach ulcers.